


What If We Never Looked Back

by NiceHatGeorgia



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode: s04e05 Divide and Conquer, F/M, look I know this is ridiculous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:20:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21569047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NiceHatGeorgia/pseuds/NiceHatGeorgia
Summary: The guards look at each other, and then at Janet, who shrugs. They loosen their grip on their weapons and ease their stance. Sam takes them in. It wasn’t hard to push past these guards, and it probably wouldn’t be hard to push past a few more.
Relationships: Samantha "Sam" Carter/Jack O'Neill
Comments: 36
Kudos: 118





	What If We Never Looked Back

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, remember like fifty years ago when coraclavia asked over on tumblr for a Divide and Conquer fic about THAT SCENE where Sam is about to be put under and Jack is walking past and she calls out to him and he looks back but doesn't stop walking and the guards hold her back? Coraclavia wanted a fic where Sam pushes past her guards, and in my head, I thought, huh, how crazy could I make it? This ridiculous little fic, eons later, is the what I came up with. 
> 
> Thanks to coraclavia for making me wonder. Thanks to nellie_oleson and joracwyn for the beta. You both made lots of good points, many of which I ignored, because this fic is a little nuts. Sorry. This fic is for @eisforelf, whose birthday is in November. Did you think I would finish something by November? I sure didn't!

It isn’t hard to push past the guards. 

Sam had watched the Colonel walk down the hall, away from her, to meet his fate. She’d called out for him and he’d looked back for a second, slowly, casually, as the guards had held her back, two strong men in their tough camo fatigues.

But Sam is strong too, and she’s not going to just let him walk away like this. So she takes a step back, drops a shoulder and surges forward with somewhat more force this time, and it isn’t hard at all to push past the guards. 

It makes her realize that they’re not really taking her seriously, that they don’t really see her as a threat. It makes her wonder what else she could get away with.

Jack seems to notice this too, stopping and turning around again with a more curious look on his face`as she draws near. He has escorts of his own, of course, as any potential assassin should, and there are people everywhere—airmen and civilians looming around every corner, Teal’c and Anise, Janet just behind them, Daniel next to her in his good suit.

Everyone seems more confused than concerned that Sam has broken past her guards, guards who are now ambling towards her at a decidedly casual pace. She holds up a hand to them. “Just give me a second.”

The guards look at each other, and then at Janet, who shrugs. They loosen their grip on their weapons and ease their stance. Sam takes them in. It wasn’t hard to push past these guards, and it probably wouldn’t be hard to push past a few more.

Then she turns to Jack. He’s looking at her intently, like he can actually see the crazy plan that’s rapidly taking shape in her head. Mind-reading is about what it’s going to take to pull this off. But if the alternatives are suicide by Tok’ra tech or being put under indefinitely, she’d rather try her luck with the crazy plan. Isn’t that what SG-1 is all about?

The thing is, he’s doing this for her, letting them tear apart his brain in the hopes that it will better her chances of making it through. But it won’t work. This isn’t a long shot, it’s a crash and burn. And she won’t stand by and let this happen. He might be trying to save her life, but now she’s going to save his.

She tips her head a bit to the side. _You want to get out of here?_

“Carter,” he says. It’s an acknowledgement and a warning. _There would be no going back._

“Yes, sir,” she says. _Let’s do this._

He frowns as if in thought, takes a breath, and says, “Ok.” Sam straightens her back, loosens her arms, and clears her head. Then Jack gives a nod and they’re both off. 

What follows is a blur of elbows and legs, jabbing and kicking and disarming. It helps that Sam knows more about base security—the system that would alert people outside of this hallway to what’s going—than anyone else in this fight. It helps that Daniel and Janet are not armed, and that Teal’c would never fire on them. He didn’t seem fully convinced about the whole za’tarc thing to begin with. Even Anise is somehow not armed, though Sam’s not sure where she would’ve stuck a weapon in that outfit anyway. 

They take out the guards, disable the alarms, and cover their tracks well enough to give them time to make it to the surface. They clamber into Jack’s truck and Sam hardly has the passenger door closed by the time he kicks it into gear and tears out of the parking lot.

“We’re going to need a new car,” she says.

Jack turns and looks at her as he speeds north on 115. It’s a look that makes her wonder if she’s grown an extra head.

“And we have to make a stop at my house.” 

After another long pause and accompanying dramatic look, he speaks. “Carter, are you insane? Am I insane? What did we just do?”

But Sam doesn’t share any of his panic. In fact, she feels a strange sense of calm washing over her. It feels good to know that she can escape anything, even her own institution. 

“You can take the next exit,” she says. Already, she can feel her old life slipping away, the life where he gave the orders and she followed his plan. She’s the one with the plan now. She’s prepared for this, or for something like this, at least. “We’ll leave your car at my place and pick up another.”

“We can’t take your car either,” he says.

“I’m not talking about _my_ car.” She looks at him for a beat until realization dawns on his face. They’re fugitives now. They’re going to have to steal cars. “There’s a big used car dealership a half mile from my place. If we’re careful, it’ll take them a while to notice anything’s missing. Should give us a good head start.” 

Jack doesn’t say anything to that. As much as she’s used to him calling the shots, she’s also used to him trusting her instincts in her own areas of expertise. Apparently stealing cars now falls within her purview. She rolls down her window and lets the wind whip through her hair as they drive along.

“You don’t think there’s a chance we’re really…” he trails off without finishing the sentence, like saying the word might trigger something.

Sam just shrugs. “Tell you what. If either one of us tries to assassinate someone, it’s up to the other one to put a stop to it.”

Jack scowls. It’s not a _great_ plan. But Sam is starting to think that what they were hiding from Anise’s machine had nothing to do with interplanetary politics. 

“What if... you know, like Anise said. What if we can’t complete our mind control mission and we self-destruct?”

Sam wants to roll her eyes. “How would that be worse than what they were going to do to you anyway?”

Jack scowls some more but doesn’t ask any other questions.

Once they get to her house, Sam runs to her basement to retrieve a black duffle bag she hoped she’d never need. Then they make their way to the car dealership on foot, and Sam hotwires something generic on the edge of the lot while Jack watches her back.

They drive all night, avoiding the main roads and switching cars again once they cross into Wyoming. By 0300, the adrenaline has worn off, and they’re both struggling to keep their eyes open. Sam pulls the car into a cheap motel, and Jack gives the guy at the desk a fake name and pays cash for their room. They make love frantically, like this first chance might be their only chance, and they pass out in each others arms, exhausted.

—

Sam wakes first, just a few hours later. She’s naked, and Jack is too, his arm draped across her stomach, his leg hooked over hers. She’s seen him sleeping before, but never quite like this. It’s enough to give her pause. Yesterday morning, she woke up and went to work. And now, a mere 24 hours later, she’s a fugitive. She can never go back to the life she once knew.

She gives Jack’s arm a little squeeze. “Hey. We should get going.” 

Jack groans and tightens his grip on her in protest. In spite of everything, she smiles. 

Fifteen minutes later, they’re both showered and dressed, ready to hit the road again. Jack motions at Sam’s black duffle bag, which is now sitting at the foot of the bed. “You going to tell me what’s in there?” 

“Oh,” Sam says. She’s been a little nervous, actually, which is really saying something considering the number of felonies she’s committed since breakfast yesterday. But she doesn’t want him to misinterpret her preparedness for something else. It’s not like she’s been planning all this time to run away with _just_ him, though it’s possible the thought had crossed her mind once or twice over the years.

“It’s everything we’ll need,” she says. She unzips the bag and shows him: passports under fake names, credit cards, birth certificates, some small weapons, and cash, lots of cash and lots of power bars that won’t expire for another twenty years or so.

“Wow,” he says. She hopes it’s an impressed “wow” and not a creeped out “wow.”

“After Kinsey had the program shut down a couple years ago, I got to thinking,” she says. Going through the gate then had been a court martial-able offense, never mind that they were right about Apophis, never mind that they saved the planet, never mind that Kinsey is an asshat. Things turned out fine but they could’ve ended very badly for SG-1. “I realized how vulnerable we were to the whims of political administrations, or even the Air Force. I hate feeling vulnerable. So I made a plan. I prepared.”

Jack flips slowly through the paperwork, a complete set for each member of SG-1, Sam’s own personal insurance policy for herself and her teammates. “It should get us out of the country easily, and more,” she assures him.

“Wow,” Jack says again, and Sam shifts on her feet. “So we just… disappear?” This is her plan, the one he’s already committed to, the one he trusted her to pull off from the moment she broke past her guards in the hallway yesterday.

Sam swallows. “You got a better idea?”

“No.”

They stand in awkward silence. For the first time in the last crazy 24 hours, Sam begins to doubt herself and the irrevocable change she initiated in both their lives.

“I couldn’t let you die,” she blurts out. “You couldn’t… I couldn’t lose you. I can’t.” She holds his gaze, her eyes pleading with him to understand, or if nothing else, to forgive. 

“You know,” he says slowly, “back on that ship, before the force field fell… I wasn’t going to walk away from you. I couldn’t.”

Sam feels a flush of relief spread through her. He understands. He understands and he feels the same way.

“We’re not za’tarcs, are we,” he says. 

Sam shakes her head.

He’s quiet, staring at the documents in front of him.

“We could… do you think we should? Go back?” she offers.

“Go back to what?” he says flatly, and he’s right. Even if they can get the Tok’ra and the SGC to move past their za’tarc witch hunt, it seems quite possible that at this point, they might spend the rest of their lives in a cell. Forget the gate, forget protecting the planet. Forget each other. There’s nothing left for them back there. 

Jack waves the handful of passports at her. “We’re in this together, right?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Yes. Always.”

“Ok. Well in that case, I think this is a great plan, Carter. Or should I say…” he flips through the little books until he finds the one with her picture in it. “Miller? Sharon Miller? Seriously?”

Sam shrugs. “I was going for generic.” 

“Ah.” Jack tucks the paperwork back into the duffle bag and zips it shut. “You are many things,” he says, taking a step towards her, “but generic is not one of them.” His hand cups her face and she leans into it. There’s no going back, but there is going forward. Maybe they really can make a go of it, together.

“I’m going to call you Sherry,” he adds. 

—

Outside of Billings, they find an impound lot where the cars aren’t even locked and the keys are tucked under the mat on the drivers’ side. Sam is relieved. It’ll be easier to drive across the border in a car they actually have the keys to. 

They travel on. Before they know it, they’re at a quiet border crossing, Sam trying to look polite and Jack trying to look bored as the customs agent thinks about whether or not he wants to bother getting out of his booth to look in their trunk. Blessedly, he decides not to. Sam thinks they probably could’ve found a way to push past this guard too, but she’s really glad they won’t have to. He hands them their paperwork and wishes them a nice day in a kind, Canadian accent. Sam does her best not to breathe a sigh of relief in front of him.

Being out of the country helps them both relax a little bit, and they make love more slowly that night, in a nicer hotel close to the airport in Calgary. Sam has already got them booked on a flight to Beijing the next afternoon, but for now, there are more immediate new territories to explore.

They stick to countries that don’t extradite, as much as they can. They spend two months on the move in China, though Jack doesn’t think their food tastes as good as the Chinese food in Colorado Springs. They bounce around a little bit in central Asia and eastern Europe before Jack declares that he’s ready to be done with landlocked countries that don’t have any good fishing. 

So they move south, and east again. Apparently there are lots of little island nations in the Indian and Pacific Oceans that couldn’t care less about someone else’s criminals.

Comoros, the Maldives, São Tomé & Príncipe. The Air Force could still send in a strike team, if they knew where to send one. Micronesia, Samoa, the Marshall Islands. The US government could sneak in some CIA agents to kidnap and return them, kicking and screaming, to face trial back home. But these options would focus a lot of public, international attention on a top secret program. Sam and Jack are counting on everyone wanting to avoid that kind of scene.

They stay diligent, keeping a low profile, and never lingering too long in one place. They pick up odd jobs here and there. Sam keeps an eye on the SGC, without them knowing, of course. They do their best to make a life of it. The tropical sunsets don’t hurt.

—

Three years later, Sam walks out onto the long dock behind the beachfront house they’re renting in Vanuatu. She’s wearing shorts and a bikini top, with one of Jack’s shirts over it, unbuttoned. She holds out a beer for Jack, and he takes it with a smile. He’s been working on refitting an old catamaran for an Englishman in town, and the end of the dock is a mess of tools and equipment. He pushes some of the tools aside so there’s room for Sam to sit next to him and dangle her feet off the edge. 

They crack open their beers and drink in silence for a while. They can see some neighboring islands across the water, but there’s not much of anything going on anywhere, just the quiet, persistent lapping of the ocean waves along the shoreline. Jack lays his hand on her bare thigh and gently rubs his thumb over her skin in a way that makes her shiver, despite the tropical heat. 

“How’s she coming along?” Sam asks after a while. Jack seems to have really thrown himself into this refit. It’s a skill he’s been honing over the last couple years, and Sam knows he finds it satisfying.

“Oh, you know,” he says. “Coming along.” He takes another sip of his beer. This is the longest they’ve stayed in any one place and Sam thinks it’s really starting to grow on him. “I was thinking when I’m done with this one, maybe I’ll see if I can’t find something else. For us.”

They haven’t owned anything since they went on the run, not a house, not a car, not a bike. They’ve collected a few more clothes and some personal items, but nothing more than will fit in a suitcase. Sam has been surprised at how rarely she misses the specifics of her old life—her commission and her motorcycle and even her name—but she does miss belonging somewhere. 

It’s been three years. Maybe the Air Force has given up on them. Maybe it’s ok to want to call someplace home.

“What would we do with with a boat?” she teases. 

Jack sets his beer down behind him. He lifts his hand from her leg and runs his fingers through her long blonde hair with an ease that, back in their Air Force days, would’ve felt more foreign than any country they’ve been to since.

“I like the blonde,” he says. She only dyed it a couple days ago. It’s the closest she’s been to her natural hair color since they left the US. Maybe this place is growing on her too.

Sam grins, sets her own beer down, and moves to straddle his legs. His hands come to rest on her thighs as hers hook loosely around his neck. “You liked every color.”

“Hm,” he hums in agreement. “That’s true.” 

“And every cut.” She runs a hand down his shirt and starts unbuttoning it so she can put her fingers on his bare skin.

“Right again,” he says. He tilts his head to the side in an unspoken challenge and slides his hands up her thighs, teasing the bottom of her shorts.

“You’d like it if I was bald,” she says. 

Jack cracks a smile at that. “Just so long as _you_ like it when _I’m_ bald.” 

“You know I will.”

“Oh, I’m counting on it, Sherry.”

Sam drops her head against his shoulder and groans. She really should’ve given more thought to potential nicknames before coming up with a fake name for herself, all those years ago. 

Jack takes the opportunity to place a kiss just behind her ear. She sucks in a breath as he nips at her earlobe, then makes his way along her jawline. She sits up again and kisses him back, intense but unhurried. They’ve got all day for this. And what a way to spend the day. Sam never imagined she’d have a life with this much sex in it.

“Jack,” she murmurs against his lips, shifting her hips on his legs.

“Yeah?” he murmurs back.

“I think you should buy us a boat.”

Jack pauses and pulls back enough to look into her eyes. He tucks some loose hair behind her ear and kisses her again, hungrily, thoroughly. Sex on the dock is not a great idea—they know this from experience—but sometimes it’s worth it anyway. Sam feels a tingle spread throughout her body as Jack’s hands slip inside her open shirt and come to rest on the bare skin of her waist.

Had she been any less distracted, she might have noticed that this was a somewhat different tingle than the one she’s come to be used to.

The next thing she feels is cold, hard metal under her shins. She sits up straight, opens her eyes and looks around. Great. Just great.

“I said a boat,” she says. “Not a ship.” She’d been expecting something like this, eventually, though she’d hoped she was wrong.

The dark grey walls of the Bilskirnir are uncomfortably familiar, in a way that makes the man whose lap she’s sitting on feel like a stranger all over again. She stands, and Jack does too. There before them is Thor, a blast from the past if there ever was one.

“Thor, buddy,” Jack says in greeting as his fingers work quickly to button his shirt back up. “Look, it’s not that I’m not happy to see you, but you’ve got to learn to knock or something.” Five minutes later and this would have been _very_ uncomfortable, at least for Sam and Jack. 

“I am glad to find you well, O’Neill,” he replies. “Carter.” 

“Hey, Thor,” Sam says warily. She glances at Jack and decides she better button up her shirt too. Not that Thor cares. 

“Yeah, about the ‘finding us’ thing,” Jack says.

“General Hammond has briefed me on your status as international fugitives.”

“Oh. Well good. That’ll save us some… briefing.” His eyes dart over to Sam and then he continues, “Hammond’s not the one who sent you, is he?” 

“Indeed he is not,” Thor replies. “He assured me that you were most likely dead.”

“Great,” Jack says, and then he grimaces, and looks again at Sam, who shrugs. It’s not great, really, but it’s better than the alternative. It’s the life they’ve chosen. “So how did you find us?” 

“I kept a sample of your genetic material from your last visit aboard this vessel, and used that to search the planet.”

“My genetic material?” Jack repeats.

“A DNA sample,” Thor clarifies. “From both of you.”

“Wow,” Jack says. “You didn’t think to ask first? Take us out to dinner or something?” 

“Dinner?” Even Sam can see that Thor looks confused. “I was not aware that you required sustenance the last time we—”

“You know what, never mind,” Jack says with a wave of his hands. He looks annoyed, but Sam can tell that he’s thoroughly enjoying himself. “What can we do for you?”

“The Asgard require your assistance on an urgent matter,” Thor says.

“I’m sorry,” Sam replies, “we can’t help you.” Apparently General Hammond’s explanation hasn’t quite sunken in. If Thor came here looking for Colonel O’Neill and Major Carter, he’s about three years too late. The DNA might match, but that’s not who they are anymore.

“You can’t?”

“We’re not with the Air Force,” Sam explains. “We couldn’t work with them if we wanted to. We have no resources, no troops, no weapons. Nothing.”

Thor narrows his weird little alien eyes at her. “It is not your resources we require. It is your minds. General Hammond and the others at the SGC were unable to come up with a solution to our problem with the Replicators.”

“Those guys still?” Jack cuts in.

Thor ignores him. “I can secure for you whatever resources you require. If you will help us, the Asgard will be forever in your debt.” 

That kind of statement would’ve meant something when Sam and Jack were working at the SGC—something for their planet and their people, something related to duty and honor. Now, as fugitives, it means something different, but no less compelling. Sam and Jack exchange a look, and—with about as much conversation as they spent on their decision to break past the guards that fateful day at the SGC—they come to an agreement.

“Ok,” Jack says. “We’re in.”

—

The mission with Thor goes off relatively smoothly. It’s nice to be back in action again, even if Sam has always found the Replicators kind of creepy. And when Sam and Jack save the day, and the Ida galaxy along with it, Thor upholds his end of the bargain: a one way ticket to any destination of their choosing.

They find a nice, quiet planet with a nice, quiet Stargate and see if they can set down some roots. It takes time, and some moving around. But eventually, they find a place that suits them. They find work even, work that’s meaningful and fulfilling. They make friends. They settle in. They learn to live life without looking over their shoulders.

—

Thirty years, five planets, four kids and three (so far) grandkids later, Sam and Jack get a letter from the SGC. Their presence is requested.

That they are not dead is no longer a secret. It hasn’t been for awhile, not since the Goa’uld were defeated. They’d gotten in touch with Teal’c first, once he’d left Earth to live with the free Jaffa, and then Daniel, as his work and travels took him all over this galaxy and others. Over the years they’d run into other old friends and allies, though they had always taken care to avoid crossing paths with the US Air Force. The Air Force, for its part, had looked the other way with equal tact.

Sam and Jack consider the invitation from the SGC. It would be a risk to go. But after all this time, it’s hard to imagine the Air Force might still try to arrest them. And they would both be lying if they said they weren’t just a little bit curious about why they’d been summoned. 

So they leave the cozy cabin they’d built by a small lake on P22-521 and make the day-long trip into the city. At the Stargate, they dial Earth by memory, though they haven’t done it in over three decades, and they transmit the code the letter gave them.

Before they step through the gate, Sam pauses and looks at Jack. They don’t know what awaits them on the other side. There might be no coming back from this. 

Jack gives her a half-smile and a shrug. For all the leaps they’ve taken together, all the cliffs they’ve jumped off, surely this can’t be the last one, can it? 

Rematerializing on the ramp at the SGC is surreal, to say the least. A part of Sam had expected to be met by a company of soldiers with guns aimed at them, but there are no soldiers, no guns, just two people.

The first is a man who introduces himself at General Isaacs. He looks vaguely familiar, and Sam wants to ask him if he’s the same Captain Isaacs who once twisted his ankle trying to run away from a drove of wild pigs on P07-819.

The second is none other than Anise. She looks hardly a day older than she did 30 years ago. Without preamble, she speaks.

“You are not za’tarcs.”

Sam and Jack stare at her in silence for a moment. Then they turn to each other and burst out laughing, a completely unrestrained belly laugh, because they’ve known for 30 years that they’re not za’tarcs. Anise and her machine had been wrong, very wrong, but the path she’d catapulted them along had made them happier than they’d ever dreamed. Coming all the way back to Earth after all this time to have Anise clear them feels like the most absurd punchline to the most ridiculous cosmic joke.

Jack manages something along the lines of “no shit” at some point as their peals of laughter ring through the cold concrete bunker they once called home. Sam is clutching at her side, and Jack has got a hand on her shoulder for support. It’s way past the time when polite laughter would’ve stopped. 

“I’m laughing so hard my face hurts,” Sam says. She points at her face and Jack nods in agreement through the tears streaming down his cheeks. Then she turns to General Isaacs and Anise. “Do you guys ever get that?”

Eventually, their laughter subsides somewhat. General Isaacs clears his throat and Anise stands awkwardly at his side, though whether she feels awkward or whether that’s just how she stands, Sam never could tell.

“The charges against you have been dropped,” Isaacs says. “You’ve been granted a full pardon, and retirement with honors. You are welcome on Planet Earth and may re-establish your home here as soon as you are able.”

This would make Sam and Jack start laughing all over again if they had any laughing energy left. “Well that’s awfully kind of you,” Jack says politely, “but no thanks.”

Anise shifts and Isaacs’ face contorts into a confused little scowl. “No thanks? But surely you want to come home? And you are now eligible for retirement benefits under the—”

“Thanks,” Jack says again. “This has been fun. Really.” Then he looks up at the control room. “Sergeant! Can you dial us up? I think you know the address.” 

He must, because moments later, the chevrons start to spin and the gate kawooshes to life. 

“General,” Sam says, with a nod to Isaacs, “and Anise. Always a pleasure.”

She grabs Jack’s hand and they step through the gate together. They’ve spent 30 years not looking back, and it’s never been so easy as it is right now.


End file.
